Baker Academic

Friday, March 7, 2014

What do Bond, Stuckenbruck, Ehrman, Keener, Bauckham, Thatcher, Crossley, and Snodgrass have in common?

Today I opened my mailbox to find a Baker Academic Catalog featuring this fine product. I must say that the roster of folks who endorse this book is quite impressive. I feel fortunate to be included in such fine company! Congrats Chris!

"In this book, as lucid and accessible as it is compelling, Chris Keith exposes the issues that lay at the very heart of Jesus's engagement with the scribal elite. This is written for upper-level students, but scholars too will find much to consider in this excellent treatment."

Helen Bond, senior lecturer in New Testament and director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins, University of Edinburgh

"This well-written study by Chris Keith puts Jesus as a public teacher into new light. The attention this book devotes to Jesus in relation to the social context of his day not only challenges assumptions about what it means for Jesus to be God's Messiah and Son of God but also offers a fresh way to understand what it meant for Jesus to have given instructions at all and to have debated them with his Jewish contemporaries. Readers with any interest in the historical Jesus will have a hard time putting the book down."

Loren Stuckenbruck, professor of New Testament and Second Temple Judaism, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

"Chris Keith is one of the leading scholars of literacy in Christian antiquity, especially as it relates to the historical Jesus. In this new contribution, he makes his views accessible to the nonspecialist who is interested in knowing, was Jesus a well-educated teacher who could read and write? And if not, why did he fall afoul of the powerful scribes--the readers, writers, and teachers of his world--leading to his demise? Clearly written and coherently argued, this will be a book for scholar and layperson alike."

Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Well informed by current academic discussions of historical Jesus research, memory, orality, and literacy, Chris Keith adds a very important social dimension to understanding the conflicts between Jesus and other teachers of his day. This fascinating book makes a new and welcome contribution to the discussion."

"With a readable style, deep engagement with other scholars, and an impressive grasp of the particulars of the ancient cultural situation, Keith offers a stimulating and creative proposal about the origins of tensions between Jesus and the scribal elite. Keith emphasizes Jesus's social status as a key contributing factor in these tensions. Along the way, Keith addresses questions about the historicity of the Gospels' portrayal of controversies with scribes and Pharisees, and a number of other issues, making this study well worth reading."

Larry Hurtado, emeritus professor of New Testament language, literature, and theology and Honorary Professorial Fellow, New College, University of Edinburgh

"This is a fresh and fruitful approach to a key aspect of the historical Jesus by one of the more creative younger scholars in the field."

"Building on extensive research in oral culture and collective memory, Chris Keith helpfully contextualizes Jesus's debates with the scribes and other experts on the Jewish Scriptures within the media culture of Roman Palestine. His readings of the Gospels offer new insights on those texts and on Jesus's teaching career, adding greater clarity to the ways that Jesus confronted the religious authorities of his own time and, ultimately, the reasons for his death."

"In Jesus against the Scribal Elite, Chris Keith provides a distinctive angle to the controversy narratives by focusing on how the scribal elites perceived Jesus's literacy and authoritative status. Keith's research complements older approaches to the controversy narratives and their focus on the law, miracles, and exorcisms. The book is convincing, carefully argued, well-documented, and remarkably easy to read. It will surely prove its worth both in the classroom and in the ongoing quest for the historical Jesus."

James Crossley, professor of Bible, politics, and culture, University of Sheffield

"This work is a well-researched, well-written, and significant contribution to the discussions of literacy and conflict in Jesus's ministry and to discussions of the nature of the Gospels. Even if one disagrees with some of the conclusions, it offers a new perspective worthy of analysis and reflection."

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Le Donne, Keith, Pitre, Crossley, Jacobi, Rodríguez

James Crossley (PhD, Nottingham) is Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, London. In addition to most things historical Jesus, his interests typically concern Jewish law and the Gospels, the social history of biblical scholarship, and the reception of the Bible in contemporary politics and culture. He is co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Christine Jacobi studied protestant theology and art history in Berlin and Heidelberg. She is research associate at the chair of exegesis and theology of the New Testament and apocryphal writings. She completed her dissertation at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 2014. She is the author of Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus? Analogien zwischen den echten Paulusbriefen und den synoptischen Evangelien (BZNW 213), Berlin: de Gruyter 2015. Christine Jacobi is a member of the „August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum“ and the „Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften“.

Chris Keith (PhD, Edinburgh) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.

Anthony Le Donne (PhD, Durham) is Associate Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary. He is the author/editor of seven books. He is the co-founder of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts Consultation and the co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Brant Pitre (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Among other works, he is the author of Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Mohr-Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2005), and Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015). He is particularly interested in the relationship between Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins.

Rafael Rodríguez (PhD, Sheffield) is Professor of New Testament at Johnson University. He has published a number of books and essays on social memory theory, oral tradition, the Jesus tradition, and the historical Jesus, as well as on Paul and Pauline tradition. He also serves as co-chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Books by the Jesus Bloggers

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Jesus and the Last Supper

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Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text